Over 750,000 people across the globe will study Mandarin Chinese this year.

China's economy is growing so quickly and becoming so influential in the world economy that people can't afford to ignore it. People who want to be ahead in whatever industry need to think about China and learning Chinese.

Being able to speak Mandarin Chinese will open doors for your career – you can apply to more interesting jobs, qualify for higher positions and higher pay. Even if you aren’t specifically interested in China, chances are good the company that you work for is.

Chances are Chinese is very different from the language you speak at home. But that doesn't mean that it is difficult to learn. Learning Chinese is simply learning a different way to think.

语素文字 - Written Chinese is comprised of over 5,000 characters. This may sound scary at first, but actually these characters are all based on a much smaller number of basic characters ("radicals"). That means that you can often guess the pronunciation of certain words, even if you haven't seen them written before.

yīn diào - Chinese is a tonal language. That means that each word has a different meaning depending on the pitch of your voice. For example: mā means "mother", but mǎ means "horse", and má means "marijuana".